Class Composer makes it easy for teachers to organize classes

This story is part of a series that will look at and profile each of the six startups in NewBoCo’s Fall 2018 accelerator programs.

An edtech startup has created a customizable platform that allows teachers to track and account for their own unique identifiers when creating classes.

Class Composer, based out of Boulder, Colorado, is a software-as-a-service company that helps teachers and schools make equitable classrooms. Class Composer’s flagship software helps automate the difficult task elementary school teachers have of determining what students are assigned to which class.

Mike Cronley, co-founder and CEO of Class Composer, said that it often falls on teachers to assign their students to the next year’s classes and making sure there is an equitable spread of students in each classroom.

“The learning management systems that schools use are not addressing this problem at all. They kind of leave it up for the schools to figure out,” Cronley said. “They’re very good at a district level, but the ground level use of these systems isn’t benefitting teachers at all.”

Before starting Class Composer, Cronley taught third grade for twelve years. It was during his time teaching that he came up with the idea for Class Composer

“Then it just grew over time to a point where I could really envision it helping not just my school but all elementary schools,” Cronley said.

Cronley’s idea came to fruition when Class Composer launched in the spring of 2017. The company now has 25 paying schools using their platform.

Class Composer was recently accepted into the 2018 fall cohort of the Iowa Startup Accelerator.

“So far the program has been great,” Cronley said. “They’ve been pushing us to go out and do discover interviews. In our case, it’s going back and talking to existing customers to learn how they like the product and showing them our new planned features and getting feedback on that. So that’s been very, very valuable.”

Looking ahead, Cronley says he plans on expanding Class Composer into a platform that also contains data tracking and grouping functionality.

“We want to sell ourselves and be positioned as a way for a teacher to create a data profile on a student that has all the information they need and care about in one place,” Cronley said. “And then they can do those things that they simply can’t do right now.”